Susan Page: But in your book it’s clear that you don’t think Islam hates America, or that all Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. Is there a point where you would feel compelled to come off the sidelines to speak out?

Laura Bush: This is what I want Americans to remember — what our real values are. And one of the very first things, one of the reasons we’re a country is because we believe in freedom of religion. We believe that people could be religious. They could choose any religion they wanted to, or they could not worship, if they didn’t want to. We don’t have any religious test in the United States. And that’s what we need to remember. We need to remember what our own values are.

We have a tendency in the United States, and it’s happened other times in our history, to become sort of isolationist and xenophobic and, you know, we’re just going to stay here together and not pay attention to the rest of the world. And it’s something that we have to pay attention to now because our world is so small. And it’s important for us — even though we’ve gone through these stages many other times in our history — to pay attention to the rest of the world.